Follow My Tracks

In the depths of Surrey stands West Park… But not for much longer. It’s formidable brick walls crumble under the weight of progress and this building having been built as an institution, commandeered to house foreign soldiers during The War, before finally being handed over the health service and providing another place for the nation to incarcerate the mad and unsightly specimens of society, or those that we simply wished to ignore, has been deemed not worth saving.

It was sad to see the first parts of the place reduced to large mounds of rubble and the ghosts of the building stood by and watched us and the workers in silence. The usual banging doors and creaking floorboards fell quiet and we walked for hours through the twisting maze undisturbed. Usually, where they might protest at our trespass, now knowing they would soon be haunting no-where, the ghosts stood aside and allowed us to pass unhindered, almost begging for us to preserve their little slice of limbo, hoping that we might just catch them in our photos, as well as the place in which they hid.

West Park lay open before us. Where doors had once been nailed shut, they hung loosely on their hinges and the few that were still solid had an open window near by. Climbing to the top of the water tower we could see where the work had begun and see the vast task that levelling the site would be. It was a fortress, even now, and so much still remained.

We wondered as if in a daze. The site was so familiar. The smells of the asylum gripped me and I walked around, damp, decay and even now something slightly clinical, filled my nostrils as i went looking at the place. The stories of these walls and rooms, how I wished the could speak and could part their paint cracked lips to whisper what had been.

I had come armed with film, its nostalgia and tactility suiting a place of such texture and yet i took few pictures. This trip had time for sitting and, perched on old chairs in a high room we swapped imperfect memories.

Putting my foot through the floor reminded me that this was still an organic place that moved in unseen ways and whilst it was an old friend of warm-toned summer evenings, it like any wounded beast that knows the spears are closing in, might take one last swipe and manage to take someone with it.

We left and had tea by the fire.

I stood under the shelter of the entrance to Epsom station waiting for Winchester to arrive. It was grey, cold and the drizzle added to the gloom of the place. Epsom felt like the end of the world. I had trudged to Mac Donalds and had a double cheese burger to pass the time and get into the warm but found myself back in the grey, waiting.

Winchester arrived and saved my from the locals and we headed towards the hospital. We parked up in the usual spot and wondered over the road. I was a bit jumpy – this would turn out to be my first successful trip in and the last time i had been in particular, the security guard had swooped down on me in mere moments.

Anyway we walked around looking for some mythical propped shut door near a staircase without success. Padded around the grounds a bit and then found a broken window into the corridors. Do we go in? We had nothing to loose but the corridors are the place where you are most likely to get caught. Now it was a case of trying doors into blocks to find one that was open… Eventually we did – and we were in.

There were some amazingly rotten floors, but following the beams and being a bit daring paid off. We had stumbled into the block with the padded cell (Dartford and Denton) and the store room in which the clothes of patients still hung.

On with the pics…

[SinglePic not found] [SinglePic not found] [SinglePic not found] [SinglePic not found] [SinglePic not found] [SinglePic not found]

There are more pics in the gallery.